Astrid H. at the Down Under Speaker Series – 2020

And I would now like to introduce our second speaker for today, which is Astrid Haich. We had the pleasure of meeting Astrid last year here in Australia. She visited us and spent some time here with us all. And I know how much she loved being here in Australian. And I had the great pleasure of getting her in the line in the female toilet and asking her some questions and having a great old chat with her. So it's my pleasure to introduce Astrid here today. I've just unmuted you. Astrid, you might need to unmute yourself. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Thank you for having me and Strength and Hope and nice to see. If I can say something tonight that can help somebody, I really do. I very much enjoyed the share before me and how much he fell in love with Alcoholics Anonymous and what a huge value he puts on it because I too am a big AA cheerleader all the way. And this program is a design for living to actually change us from the inside out. So I have a tendency to talk about childhood trauma because that's a big part of my history before I ever even started drinking. I feel that I had defects in my character. You know, and I was even just thinking the other day that when we write out an inventory in step four and we make a list, we're writing inventory often of episodes that happened in our life way before we ever drank. But then so often a sponsor will say, what happened the first time you ever had a drink? And they'll start looking and examining your alcoholism at the day I started drinking. But you see, there was some twisted stuff that happened before I ever had the first drink. And I come from a mother who's a war survivor. I come for a lot of yelling, a lot spanking, what I would call absolutely over-disciplining in our household, absolutely without a doubt. Personally, this is just for me, I don't believe that children need to be hit. I believe that have healthy shame. And when you tell a child that you're disappointed that they did something, they usually back down because there's a natural people-pleasing instinct in the herd instinct that's designed inside of all of us. And if that is used properly, we can all get along with one another and we can use healthy shame to auto-correct a child and bring them back into a moral state of consciousness. Children are not born junk. Children are notborn alcoholics. Childrenare not born monsters. That's my personal opinion. And because I'm asked to speak, then it's my 45 minutes, then I'll share my experience, strength and hope. So I believe we all come out of the womb perfect. And there are no genes yet found for alcoholism. If someday the scientific community finds it great. And so even when they say it's a family disease, my belief is that it's a family diseased due to passed on behavior, due to passed on character defects, due too passed on behaviour on how to cope or not to cope, fight or flight, screaming, yelling, the same type of disciplinary actions, cold parenting or just not being there, being emotionally turned off or being physically abusive or mentally abusive. So when you have these components in your life, you're already going to be bent sideways before you ever start to drink. And what's interesting is you can look in a household of three or four children that all come from the same exact household, yet all of them will have different pathologies. And maybe you have an overeater who just turns into 300 pounds and completely stuffs their feelings. They have a very hard time bringing those feelings to the surface. And then you might have an A-type personality that's incredibly controlling they want everything clean and folded and their hair and every eyelash and the clothing has to be perfect and the shoes and the this that that and timing but time has to Be exact you know that's not us either and then there's us the crazy ones you know we're uh we're rebellion dogs are every step you know where we're restless irritable and discontent um I'm I'm just always in your face always starting problems I'm defiant and i'm grandiose as as harry tebow would say in the tebow papers interestingly enough also psychiatrically is the defiant loud crazy wild grandiose one is the easiest one to treat in the end because we're still in touch with our feeling even though our feelings are right at the surface and we're super skin thin-skinned at least we can get into a big rage because someone hurt our feelings or our feelings get hurt so badly that we can cry deeply. So in the end, arriving at the doorstep of Alcoholics Anonymous, these are actually good points to have even though we're going to allow God and the steps and spiritual principles to sort of straighten that out in the end so that they're not so extreme. So one of the tools that people that come from trauma use is they live in fight or flight. Okay. So I'm either going to box you out or I'm going to run as fast as I can and I'm gonna throw you away and I'M GONNA DITCH YOU AND GET AWAY FROM YOU. LITERALLY, I'M GOING TO CUT YOU OUT OF MY LIFE. I'M going to turn on you like a rattlesnake. I don't have any other tools. This is before I start drinking. I'm already wired for fight or flight, the psychiatric community will tell you that most ADD children are ADD because they're living in fight or flight. They're living in survival mode. A child living in survival mode never knows they're living in survival modes. Even most adults that are living in survival mode don't know that they're living in survival mode, survival mode becomes so familiar that we just don't ever know what it feels like to just relax to just put our head on somebody's lap to just get lost in a book or a movie or out in the sun or the backyard or listen to a story that our mother is telling and find something soothing about it. So I can see looking back now, I had no capacity to self-soothe. And so what's going to happen is I'm going to go to a party and guess what? I'm going to open a beer and alcohol is going to do for me what I couldn't do for myself. And the self-s soothing mechanism is going down. And alcohol is gonna make everything temporarily okay for me. All of a sudden, I'm more social. My attention span is better. I'm interested in people and what they're saying. I have a crush on you. I'm not so inhibited. I want to say hi. I want to Say hello to strangers. I don't care about how I look so much. So what? I'm tall and lanky and flat chested. It doesn't matter anymore. All that stuff begins to fall away. And alcohol does for me what I couldn't do for myself. So in the beginning, alcohol is the solution. The liquid is the solution and I personally have a lot of experience and opinions about the invisible line. Some people do share from a place that they cross over the invisible line the very first day they ever drank. I absolutely did not cross over to the invisible line. The first time I ever drank, I remember having a control and a brake pedal in junior high and the beginning of high school. I remember thinking I'm not drinking on Sunday. I have to go to school on Monday. I've got homework, I've Got stuff to do. And I remember the phenomenon of craving was not on me was not all over me. But somewhere, I think in probably my junior year of high school, I Remember crossing over the invisible line and everything shifted. And i was mildly intoxicated most days and for sure drunk every night and those were the days of getting a fake id and going to bars and now i'm you know 16 or 17 and i'm hanging out with much older people and you know i don't know where my parents are in all of this it's like i'm not blaming them i'm just saying there was so much neglect and so much oh mismanagement of the children and they, they only did the best they could do. So it's not to blame them. It's to show you an ecosystem that I was born from so that I don't just start with the story of when did I have my first beer? My sisters and I used to knock the crap out of each other. There was so much sibling rivalry. I have two sisters, one older and one younger. I'm in the middle. I'M the, the, the middle child the the often the identified patient often the one that are you saying five minutes no anyway now i'm drunk all the time and i already have childhood trauma can you hear me no you're cutting it now ester can you hear me you can hear me wait did you lose a big hunk of it yeah just a little bit did you loose a big hunk if it okay so anyway at some point I cross over an invisible line and I lose the freedom of choice and now I'm an alcoholic and I already have childhood trauma now in the alcoholism, I'm going to create more trauma. I'm going to have sex with strangers. I's going to do pitiful and incomprehensible things. I am going to put myself in positions to be harmed. I will put myself into embarrassing situations. And you know, I mean well but I can never do well. I believe that my father really hit me the most. My older sister swears he never hit her so I can remember hundreds of times that my father hit me. Now, the impact that that makes on a female when the father is continuously hitting the daughter is, believe it or not, I'm going to even get some type of subconscious arousal or familiarity of a boyfriend that pulls my hair or calls me names or treats me like crap. I don't know what to do with a man in a three-piece suit that opens the door and calls me honey and sweetheart. This is so unfamiliar to me that I'd rather do something that I know is wrong for me but that is familiar than something that's unfamiliar but is right for me so i'm damned if i do and i'm damn if i don't and because the disease is designed not to see itself i don' t have the capacity to know how screwed and how screwed up i am it takes years and it often takes many inventories to really get down to the causes and astra do you want to turn your camera off this is not a race this is on uh am i going in and out yes it might be better if you turn your camera off can you hear me better so so yep that's great yeah it's all so so i start when i go at at 28 years of age i finally go into my first rehab and i get sober but draw i don't do the steps as a way of life i do them as a homework assignment and if you're going to do the stats as a home work assignment you're not going to get my i just thought once i get to eight and nine i can live you know i'm sure i got something out of it but i did not lift the restlessness the irritability and the discontentedness i did not have the capacity to back down or practice the restraint of pen and tongue or see my part in anything at all never never never i was always blaming other people i was always looking outside of me. I was always, uh, doing a geographical or trying to pick another boy, so on and so forth. So like it says in the big book, the disease awaits at every man and woman's elbow to resume its destruction. And it waits very patient patiently. So somewhere down the line, I've got a house, I'm not a child and I've done a business and I get into a relationship with a guy. And now remember, I don't even know how to get along with my dad. I don'T even know how to Get Along With My Siblings. And I pull a relationship into my life with absolutely no relationship skills. Please let me say that again. No relationship skills in the 12 and 12. It says the total inability to form a true partnership. I'M NOT KIDDING. I'm fight or flight. And I'M GOING TO CUT YOU OUT OF MY LIFE. AND THE PUNISHMENT I INFLICT UPON YOU WILL NEVER FIT the crime. You show up late, you forget something and I'm going to ring you. And I'm going to ride you just like I learned in my own household. I'm not going to let up. I'm gonna give it to you and I don't know how to be kind. And after I've done an episode like that, I always feel guilty and I feel shame because I see that I couldn't stop the character that I was, but I don' t have anything to replace it. So I know that I'm the wrong character for my life, but I don't know what behavior to add to it. I don' t have an actual program of action, a program of recovery. So like so many people, I relapse. And when I relapsed, I re lapsed hard. How is it going? If I try to put the camera back on, we're good. unmute again i need you okay can you see me can you hear me yeah that's better okay so i relapse and i relapsed hard here comes the juicy part so tell me to turn my camera off if it gets cut up okay our relapse and our relapsed card bill wilson sorry got it okay so bill wilсон talks about the the woman is unrecognizable within weeks she turns into a sea hag just this horrible freaking nightmare you know so anyway that's me and this time i literally like blow everything down i own a home and i move out into the streets like if that is sanity i don't know what is now vodka is my main staple and i'm never people that come in with just alcohol problems anymore the landscape of alcoholics anonymous has changed so certainly there are drugs added to my story and i am not going to get into pipes and powders and pills and needles and all of that stuff but you know i drank vodka every day and moved out into the street and then a whole host of drugs are problem too and i just do deep psychosis deep west was renting my house out and i lost my mind and i was in and out and in and out and in and out of jail over and over and over again. And, you know, I went to I saw so much disaster and I went to so many rehabs and nothing was happening properly for me. Like God just wasn't downloading. I mean, I have 23 prostitution cases, 18 drug and alcohol related cases. I've had guns put to my head. I've been I've been raped. I've seen dead bodies. I've seeing overdoses. I've, you know, seen my friends disappear and heard that they were cut up in dumpsters later on. Like literally. So now I have my childhood trauma. I have my early teenage trauma, like, you know, getting raped for your first sexual time and then having sex with strangers and and then never getting along with your family. And now I've got all this street trauma like. You guys want to talk about trauma? Let me tell you. they're not a homework assignment there's a lot of stuff with me wrong out of jail and every time jail the i want drug version or i'm not going i'm then i'm going to go into rehab and i yeah sorry to interrupt and then give me some tapes by this guy named bob yep uh you're just cutting in and out again i'm sorry you can't hear me no it's okay should we just wrap it up do you guys want to share um it's totally up to you i'm happy i know that we will lose our audience if i Thank you.